"So, what did you want to show me?" said Lauren to her friend Brendan.

"This! It’s my newest invention."

What he held in his hand looked just like a normal pencil. Same color and size.

"But it’s just a pencil isn’t it?"

"Yes. Well, actually, it was before I imbued it with specific magical properties. I’ve worked on this spell all month. I tested it myself and I am now ready to show you how it works and what it can be used for."

"What a thrill, she said with barely any intonation in her voice. Does it write in different colors of the rainbow if you ask it to?"

"You really underestimate the spells I’m learning from my books now, Lauren. Give me your hand. See, the lead of the pencil allows me to delimit areas where I want the spell to have an effect. After the delimitation is done, all I have to do is use the eraser."

As he showed Lauren the pencil he was holding, he took her right hand in his and approached the instrument from her wrist. Using the lead, he delicately traced a line on her skin, from top to bottom before going up again and completing the circle, as if he drew one of those friendship bracelets. He then turned the pencil around and touched Lauren’s hand with the tip of the eraser.

"Voilà! And now we wait."

"What do you mean we wai…"

Her sentence was interrupted by a gasp as she saw what was happening to her hand. Reacting to the magic imbued in the eraser, her fingers started to retract inside her hand. She could feel the magic tingling through her fingers as the spell ran inside of her. And it was good magic, too. It didn’t look like one of those cheap retracting spells where the skin folds inwards like when you push on the fingers of a blown latex glove. The effect was as if an invisible cloth was put upon her fingers and slowly consumed the flesh as it fell towards her hand. She moved her fingers as they kept sinking in, fascinated by the effect as she lost more and more phalanges to this curious power. Suppressing a giggle, she tried to grab a tissue from the box on the table to see how different her transforming hand felt. She quickly realized that her thumb was nowhere to be found, and had to use her four remaining finger stubs to pull it out.

The magic continued its effect down on her palm, now going faster than she expected. The tissue slipped from her now fingerless hand and before she could wiggle the remaining half of it, it got completely consumed.

"Do you like it?"

"It’s… amazing! I love the feeling that passed through me as it… as I… Well..." She waved her shortened arm to her friend. "I wished I could’ve stopped the process midway to try different things at different lengths."

As she was talking, she experimented with the remains of her newly reshaped arm. Her hand had vanished up to her wrist, which now ended in a round stump, as if her hand never even existed. With her left hand, she touched the newly formed skin on her arm and was surprised to find it was very smooth. She also left out a brief sigh of pleasure as the contact of her hand unexpectedly aroused her.

"Is this reversible?"

"Of course! I wouldn’t have tried it on you before making sure it was completely safe. I’m not that bad of an asshole, you know…"

"Okay then. I have an idea!"

"What is it?"

"You’ll see. Can I use it myself on my own body? Or does it need you to channel magic?" He made a gallant gesture towards her and dropped the pencil in her remaining hand. "Alright. But I need to take these off before I try it."

She dropped the pencil on the table and proceeded to undress clumsily. First, she laughed at how she tried to grab her shirt with her right arm but instead ended up rubbing her stomach up and down. Grabbing her shirt with her left hand only, she threw it over her head, pushed a couple times on the fabric with her abbreviated arm and managed to break free out of it, slightly out of breath. She had less trouble undoing the button on her pants, and by the time they hit the floor the pencil was already back in her hand. Barring her panties, she started working on her new look.

She briefly looked at her right arm, hesitated, shrugged, and bent forward to reach her legs. Like Brendan had done on her arm, she drew a line starting from the front of her right upper thigh that curved to the back of it before coming back around to complete the circle. Satisfied with that stroke of the pencil, she looked up at him and smiled. Using her right stump, she reached for a lock of hair that had fallen on her face and smudged it back behind her ear. Bending back to business, she gave the same treatment to her other leg. Finally, she managed to awkwardly draw around her left bicep using her left hand by flipping the pencil over, while being careful not to touch herself with the other tip. Then, she sat on the floor, blew a kiss to her friend and touched both of her legs first before touching her left bicep again.

The same sensation as earlier flowed through her limbs as the magic started working. She dropped the pencil away from her and looked in awe as her intact limbs started retreating inside of her, constantly renewing the skin at her extremities. She couldn’t help but again wiggle her toes and fingers until they were all gone, like a final testimony of their existence. As the magic worked up her calves and her left forearm, she got up on her knees and climbed on the couch. She sat again in a now more comfortable position now that her legs were gone up to her knees while her left elbow was now a thing to be forgotten (at least for now). The magic slowed down and finally came to a rest. What was left of Lauren was as good as can be. A right arm up to the wrist, clumsily trying to fix her hair, a short arm stump to the left that was only just long enough to reach her ear, and two firm leg stumps, barely distinguishable from the sagging couch. She let go of her hair, turned towards her friend and used her left arm stump to stabilize herself on the back of the couch. Then, she showed him her best smile and silently invited him to join her using the only remaining limb she could actually wave.